


Cold-Burning Star

by nihilegi



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Canon Compliant, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 10:53:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21298262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nihilegi/pseuds/nihilegi
Summary: Can you tell me, was it worth it? Baby, I don't wanna know!Two sleepless nights in the life of Richie Tozier.
Relationships: Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 41





	Cold-Burning Star

**Author's Note:**

> [listen](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2RkD9DAIoENk1L3SKibYLf?si=Eo8Nsk0eT1G1UOCs1NlWaw)

“And on one of those cold days, even on a clear sunny day, the Sun is pointless and worthless. As the bone-chilling cold numbs your fingers and toes, it’s as if the Sun itself has gone cold, sapping away all the joy and happiness in the world.”

— Fraser Cain, _Can Stars Be Cold?_

*** 

The ocean shone black in the suffocating dark of night. From where Richie sat, in front of the lit headlights of his rented car, he could see little. The dips and swirls in the white sand from a day of beachgoing told stories he couldn’t put a plot to – children probably played where he was currently seated, their attentive parents watching lovingly. Children who would be children until the moment they weren’t, their youth and innocence ripped away from them by something completely out of any adult’s control. This was a cruel reality parents didn’t like to hear, a reality they cringed away from. You could be the most caring, overbearing, understanding parent in the world, but you’d never be there when it really mattered. The moment your child shifts from youth to other and sees the world for what it really is: cruel. Pointlessly cruel and unreasonable.

Or perhaps Richie was just projecting.

_The VCR made a soft buzzing noise, the only discernable sound in the quiet of Richie’s basement (except for Mike’s soft snores). _A New Hope _was long over, the screen of the TV radioactively blue in the dark of night. He focused in on Mike’s breathing, the glare of the television, the way Bill would mumble every now and then, and took deep breaths to calm himself. It was a nightmare, only a nightmare. His dirty little secret was safe, but he still felt dirty all the same._

Richie’s black socks and dress shoes lay haphazardly abandoned a few paces away from him, a gentle breeze coating the shine of his shoe polish in grit. His toes gripped the sand, searching for something solid to ground his feet. It was a futile search, because despite his secure seating, Richie still felt like he was falling. The wind whipped his hair free from whatever reasonable arrangement it had been coifed in earlier. It was a welcome liberation.

_Beverly wasn’t allowed to stay over past dark. She was in the care of her aunt now, but Ms. Marsh still worried for her niece, especially after learning the truth of Bev’s upbringing. The two of them were due to leave town in a few days, and there was an impossible sort of dread that came with that fact. Richie couldn’t put a name to it, but he felt like the moment Beverly moved to Portland, the golden thread linking the seven of them together would snap. He didn’t know why he felt this way, because what they had should be immortal. It had to be. _

_Bev had been oblivious to Richie’s trepidation, sitting on the ratty old couch with her sock-clad feet curled under her. She’d bounced up and down in her excitement to watch the movie (because somehow she’d never seen _Star Wars_ before) and she was beautiful. It was one of the many times Richie had stared at her and tried to love her like Ben and Bill did. _

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina was lovely in late spring, early summer. Beverly had included Richie extensively in her wedding planning process, hoping to take his mind off his all-encompassing misery. And you know what? It _had_, it really had for a while. Seeing Bev wrapped up in white, in lace and taffeta (and other fabric names he hadn’t learned until recently) at her wedding dress fittings, was wildly therapeutic. Almost as therapeutic as Ben asking, _begging_ for a hint as to what her dress looked like, only for Richie to make up outlandish lies.

“Our darling Beverly has chosen to forgo traditional wedding attire. She’s settled on a maroon jumpsuit, adorned with rhinestones,” he’d said at Ben’s bachelor party, keeping a straight face as he sipped his beer. 

“Beep beep, Richie,” Ben had groaned, regretting having asked in the first place.

_Richie had fallen asleep sometime after the movie started. (He’d seen it enough times that he could nearly recite it from memory – he and Stan could do a rousing rendition of the Cantina scene, with Stan doing all the voices and Richie humming a nauseatingly obnoxious loop of the Cantina Band’s music until Eddie punched him to make him stop it.) Beverly was long gone, having slipped out unnoticed, and the rest of the group was piled up on the various couches and chairs in the basement, all fast asleep. It appeared Richie’s nightmare hadn’t awoken anyone else, to his relief._

But now the wedding ceremony was over, Ben and Beverly due to leave for their Italian honeymoon first thing in the morning. Bill and Audra were leaving Myrtle Beach the following day, and Mike was extending his stay a few days as he considered his future in Derry. Richie had been dropping sly hints, encouraging Mike to come live with him in LA. He’d hated being alone since, well, since IT. That was perhaps why he’d taken such an active role in wedding planning – he got to spend every second of every day with Bev and Ben, who always knew exactly what to say to him and how to deal with the elephant in the room. 

(That elephant obviously being that there were two fewer people in Beverly and Ben’s wedding party than there should have been.)

_Stan was stretched out on the couch, mouth wide open and his arms crossed over his chest like a mummy. He was all too still when he slept; sometimes Richie joked about holding a mirror up in front of Stan’s mouth to check if he was still breathing. Sometimes, when it was just the two of them, he actually did it._

And Stan’s death still hurt, it always would. The thought of him sitting in that tub, knowing the Losers would never see his wry smile again, knowing that Patty had likely boxed up all of his bird-watching books because they were simply too painful to look at every day… the pain was crippling. Overwhelming. He could hardly breathe around it.

_Considering Stan had commandeered an entire couch to himself after Beverly left, Bill and Mike were forced to share the other. Their heads were at opposite ends, and their bodies tapered into a tangle of legs and blankets as they met in the middle. Richie’s basement always ran a little colder than the rest of the house. It was a good temperature to curl up next to your friends under a pile of blankets… not that Richie ever would. He wasn’t queer, and he couldn’t have anyone thinking he was. Directly above where he was lying on the floor, he heard Ben shift in his reclining armchair, getting comfortable._

_But… where was Eddie?_

At least Richie could think about Stan. What-happened-to-Eddie remained inside of him, completely untouched. He’d built walls around that particular pain, because tapping into it would… well, it would end him. The closest he’d ever come to acknowledging what-happened-to-Eddie had occurred at the Kissing Bridge as he recarved their initials into the wood, making some small part of them immortal.

_Richie sat up, his head swimming and his gaze hazy in the blue-saturated room. His glasses were folded next to him on the carpet – someone must have taken them off his face while he slept. There were dried tear tracks on Richie’s cheeks, and he scrubbed at them with the back of his hand. He felt wobbly and unstable like he always did after his nightmares. All of a sudden, Richie saw movement out of the corner of his eye and whipped around, his heart pounding in his throat._

_“Hey, did I wake you up?” Eddie asked from the foot of the basement stairs, gripping the bannister. The soft t-shirt he wore was so large that Richie couldn’t tell if he was wearing pants beneath it. His gaze was far-away, haunted. There were dark circles under his eyes. Richie’s heart stuttered._

“God,” he wheezed, drawing his knees up to his chest to bury his face into them. He couldn’t curl up as small as he wanted to, because with time and age he’d lost the spindly flexibility of his youth. The waves lapped at the shore, and Richie zeroed in on their gentle, repetitive sound. The world hadn’t quite ended yet, and this was proof. 

_“No, you didn’t wake me up.”_

“Richie,” a soft, sweet voice said, and he lolled his head over to see Beverly standing next to him. She wore one of Ben’s t-shirts and a pair of huge flannel sleeping pants, and her hair was chaotic and tangled on top of her head. 

“What’re ya doin’ here? Can I bum a smoke, Ms. Lady?” Richie asked her, a voice coming out of him that was somewhere between a 1920s newsboy and a radio broadcaster from the fifties. The impression felt hollow, even to him, but Bev didn’t call him on it. She simply shrugged a shoulder, causing the neckline of her shirt to slip down and reveal one sharp, pale collarbone.

“I could see you from our suite’s window. We were worried about you,” she said quietly, her voice like music over the ocean’s accompaniment. “And please don’t say anything about how this is our wedding night and we should spend it together. Ben and I have a life-time to spend together. Right now, you need me more.” 

Richie shut his mouth from where he’d opened it, preparing to say exactly that. 

_“Did you have a bad dream?” Eddie asked, inching closer to Richie. He’d also been designated to the floor after all the couches and the chair were called by the other boys. Richie had fallen asleep keenly aware that he had to remain entirely still, to avoid accidentally brushing against Eddie in the night. That would have been catastrophic, cataclysmic, some other “cata—” word he couldn’t think of. Richie shook his head, putting his glasses on to hopefully gain a little clarity. Eddie looked unconvinced._

Bev walked around to the driver’s side of Richie’s car, leaning inside and switching the radio on. Richie focused in on the soft sound of static as she flipped between stations, settling on one playing classic rock. The outro of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here mingled with the wind, and the sand seemed to swirl around in time with it. 

_“Are you going back to sleep soon?”_

_“Probably not.”_

The music brought new light to the darkness, setting the night ablaze with sound and melody and assigning a sort of reason to that which was previously reasonless. Beverly had a way of doing that: she always knew what Richie needed, knew when he needed to be alone in the dark and when he needed to be in the company of her music.

_“Want to go up to your room? So we won’t wake up the others?” _

_“Sure. We can listen to music, if you want. I just got a new Sony for my birthday.”_

Beverly walked back around the car, dropping down next to him in the sand and kicking her slippers off. He nudged her, jostling her shoulder with his shoulder, and she took the hint, leaning into his warmth. Their shadows stretched out on the sand, elongated, reaching all the way to where the ocean lapped at the shore. With how close they were, Richie couldn’t pick out their individual forms. They looked like one impossible entity.

_“You’re listening to 95.7, Derry’s classic rock station. In case you’re just now joining us, tonight we’ve been discussing the rumors – ha! Pun intended! – swirling around Fleetwood Mac. Apparently Silver Springs, the Stevie Nicks ballad that was cut from the original track list of Rumors back in ’77, is causing drama again. Tom, I’ve heard Nicks is threatening to leave the band because Mick Fleetwood won’t give her the rights to this song!” One radio broadcaster said to the other, sounding overjoyed at the turn of events. His voice was slightly distorted with static. Richie scoffed, turning the volume down slightly so the announcer’s voice would be a little less grating._

_“So much _drama_,” Eddie said, flopping back on Richie’s hastily made bed, completely unselfconscious in the way he moved. Eddie was insane and neurotic, but he didn’t spend every second of every day analyzing himself to see if his actions and interactions were “appropriate.” Richie stared at him, envious._

Pink Floyd faded out into vaguely dissonant, descending chords that Richie knew well. He scoffed, briefly considering the possibility that his entire existence was one huge cosmic joke.

“Oh, I remember this one. Silver Springs. It was one of my favorites when I was younger,” Bev said absently. 

“Yeah, I remember listening to it when we were kids. You’d wrap yourself up in a shawl and twirl around the clubhouse whenever Stevie was on.” Bev huffed out a laugh at the memory.

_Richie placed the radio on his nightstand, sitting on the edge of his bed a respectable distance away from Eddie, who was still splayed out dramatically. Richie’s feet were barely grazing the carpet, and all at once he felt trapped. Like maybe Bowers was going to pop out of nowhere, see Richie watching Eddie, and beat him to a pulp. _

_“You could be my silver springs, blue-green colors flashing. I would be your only dream, your shining autumn ocean crashing,” Stevie sang on the radio. Richie bit his lip, furrowing his brow and looking away. He wanted to make a joke, he wanted to do a voice, but he was still too raw from his nightmare._

And the ocean was far from blue-green. It was black as pitch, black as grief. It was climbing towards the shore like it wanted to overtake the land. 

“Can you tell me, was it worth it? Baby, I don’t wanna know,” Stevie crooned over the radio, and Richie’s hold on Beverly tightened. Time felt fragmented, dangerous and slippery, like if Richie wasn’t careful he’d accidentally fall into the past, into a time where nothing made sense and everything made sense. Where he didn’t have to reckon with _who_ he was meant to be, he simply got to _be_. And Eddie would be there, of course. 

The waves crashed in the distance, and he forced himself to breathe.

_“Do I have something on my face?” Eddie said, his voice shockingly bitchy for the late hour. Richie looked away, zeroing in on the pattern of his comforter instead._

_“No.”_

“The closest I ever got to… to telling Eddie was while this song was playing,” Richie said suddenly. The words were ripped from deep down in his chest and, spoken aloud, they sounded raw. They sounded stupid. Part of him still feared Beverly didn’t truly know the depth of his feelings for Eddie, the complicated nature of their relationship, even though he knew she _had_ to – he could see it in her eyes, that day at the quarry. Part of him wanted her to shove him away and call him a queer, leaving him alone by the ocean.

She did not.

_“God, lie down please. You’re making me paranoid,” Eddie griped, and Richie slowly did as he was told, moving slightly closer to Eddie in the process. Their elbows knocked together. Perhaps if the clown wasn’t so fresh in his mind, he’d have been able to regain his bearings and remember how to be fucking normal. He stared at the ceiling, at the opposite wall, at the radio. Anywhere but at Eddie._

“Tell me about it,” Bev whispered.

“We’d just watched _Star Wars_, all of us together. I think it was one of the last times we were all together after IT, before you moved to Portland. You’d gone home already, and the other guys were asleep. Eddie and I were listening to the radio in my room, lying on my bed, and…”

_“Stop thinking so loudly.”_

_“I’m not thinking at all.”_

_“Normally I’d agree with you, but that look on your fucking face makes you look constipated.”_

_“You’re so fucking charming, Eddie Spaghetti.” _

_“Don’t call me that!”_

“There was just this feeling in the air… it was unnamable. Well, maybe it wasn’t, but neither of us were capable of naming it. He was so close to me that I felt every single heartbeat, every single inhale that passed through his chest. Every time either of us moved, our hands would touch. He was so _bitchy_ when we were young, always on the verge of a complete psychotic break, but then? There? We’d reached a sort of understanding. I didn’t crack a joke about his mom, and he didn’t insult my sense of humor. We were just… quiet, finding reprieve in each other’s stillness.”

“Time cast a spell on you, but you won’t forget me. I know I could have loved you, but you would not let me,” Stevie sang from the radio, her voice warbling with emotion. Richie didn’t cry – he was all out of tears, it seemed – but something inside him clenched painfully nonetheless.

_“What was your dream about?” Eddie asked, eyes wide and earnest. (Can you tell me, was it worth it?)_

_“I can’t talk about it.” Richie folded his arms behind his head, once again gently jostling Eddie with his elbow. Eddie didn’t pressure him further. (Baby, I don’t wanna know!)_

“What happened?” Beverly asked. The wind was picking up, whipping her red-brilliant hair into Richie’s face. He reached up, smoothing a hand along her head to calm her hair. He could only imagine how the two of them looked to outsiders – the beautiful bride having a torrid affair with a groomsman, and not even a sexy one! Oh, how people would talk. 

_Silver Springs reached its crescendo, and Eddie’s eyes had fallen shut. Richie hadn’t asked why Eddie was awake – he already knew. They didn’t talk about it, but the two of them were plagued with nightmares since IT. More so than the other Losers._

_In his drowsy, half-asleep state, Eddie moved closer and rested his face on Richie’s chest, throwing an arm over his middle. Richie felt like he was having an asthma attack, and briefly considered making a crack about borrowing Eddie’s inhaler. He remained quiet._

“I never wanted to let go of him. I thought we could stay there forever.” 

_“Eds?” Richie said, hoping the movement had been unconscious on Eddie’s part, hoping that speaking aloud and breaking their silence would also shatter the illusion of maybe-he-feels-this-too._

_“Shut _up_, Rich. I’m sleeping.” And Richie wrapped an arm around Eddie’s back, clutching him like one or both of them was dying of hypothermia. Eventually, Richie’s heartbeat slowed enough that he could feel how wildly rapid Eddie’s was. _

“And we never talked about it. He just went home the next morning, and you moved to fucking Portland, and everything stayed the same until we… until we _forgot_. Bev, how could I forget that? How could I forget _him_?”

“We didn’t choose to forget. IT was insidious. IT knew that the one thing we couldn’t bear to lose was each other, so IT took us all away and forced us to forget. This wasn’t your fault, Richie. None of it is your fault.”

“But I could’ve told him. He didn’t…” And, oh God, there were the tears. “He didn’t know how loved he was. He died thinking the only person who could ever care for him was his fucking mother.”

“No, Richie, he didn’t.” Bev’s voice was soft, gentle and placating. “If he’d thought that, he wouldn’t have come back to Derry.” 

_He wanted to kiss him. _

_He didn’t dare._

In real time, in their present reality, Silver Springs faded out into something happier, more upbeat, but Richie couldn’t focus on the music anymore. He cried like a baby, in a way he hadn’t cried since Derry, and Bev pulled his head down so he was sobbing into the dip between her neck and shoulder. He was thrust back into their collective youth, back when they were all rage and love and teeth and fingernails, grappling with the world and begging it to make sense. Over and over, Beverly whispered to him, “he knew, he knew, he knew.” 

With everything in him, Richie wished he could believe her, but he knew that if Eddie really had known, he’d still be alive. It was irrational, illogical, but if he’d known how _loved_ he was, he would’ve held on a little bit longer. They would have gotten him out of Neibolt, and he’d be sitting next to Richie, in Bev’s place.

“I think I always loved him a little too much, a little too hard. I loved him like we’d been married for forty years when we were only twelve years old. I can’t imagine what things would have been like had he…”

“Say it. You should say it.” 

“Had he survived.” His voice cracked, and he was _embarrassed_ to say it aloud. He felt like a toddler, stomping his feet in the middle of a temper tantrum and insisting things go his way because it simply wasn’t _fair_. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, even to himself, he was wildly jealous of Ben and Beverly. How had they gotten the happiest ending imaginable, their biggest concern being which airline to fly with during their honeymoon, when Richie’s biggest concern was whether living had merit anymore?

“You don’t have to feel empty. I know you do, but you don’t have to. You have so many people who love you, who need you,” Beverly said, and God damn it all, she was crying too. Her eyes swam in the abrasive glow from his headlights. Richie made the bride cry on her wedding day. Brilliant.

“But not him.”

“No, not him. But you can remember him, and one day you’ll be able to remember his name and his face and his heart without hurting this badly. All of us will. It’s just so raw, _too_ raw right now,” she continued, tightening her hold on him.

“I want it to stop hurting, of course I want it to stop hurting, but all I have left of him is this hurt. If it stops, I’ll have lost him completely,” Richie said softly.

And Beverly had nothing to say in response to that.

_The sun was rising outside, its light sneaking in through the slats in Richie’s blinds to stretch across the floor. Neither boy noticed. They were sleeping peacefully for the first time in a very long time, wrapped around each other so that it was impossible to tell where Eddie ended and Richie began._

_But then Eddie began to stir._

The two of them sat in silence for what could have been hours or what could have been days. The ocean inched closer to them, swallowing the heads and shoulders of their shadows, but neither of them commented on it. Richie felt Bev inhale and exhale and reminded himself over and over that there was still something worth living for. He wished they were both twenty-seven years younger, passing a cigarette back and forth between them in silence, but ostensibly they’d both managed to quit some time in the past few decades.

(“Ostensibly” meaning he wouldn’t turn down a cig right then, if Bev were to offer him one.) 

_Richie’s eyes drifted open. Slowly, lazily. He was splayed out on his back, one of his arms twisted behind his head, and his glasses were still on his face. They pressed into his forehead painfully. Eddie was curled into a little ball with his back to Richie. He watched wordlessly as Eddie trended back towards the land of the living._

Beverly yawned and Richie felt it more than he saw it – her body tensed momentarily. He could only imagine how late it was getting, or rather how early. He suspected they’d long since passed the stroke of midnight. 

“Bev,” he said, his voice raw. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Bev, you should go to bed. Get some sleep. You have an early flight.” 

“I’m fine, don’t worry about me,” she said, smiling up at him. Her pretty eyes, as blue as they’d been in their youth, were red-rimmed.

“I know, but I think I’m probably going to bed soon too.” 

_He stretched a hand out, drifting so close to Eddie’s back that he could feel the warmth and life radiating from him. Two millimeters, and they’d be touching. Richie’s arm quivered from the recklessness of it all._

Beverly looked uncertain for a moment, but something in Richie’s eyes changed her mind. She rose to her feet unsteadily, putting her sandy slippers back on before she started walking back to their beach-side hotel. She didn’t make it more than ten paces before twirling around to face him, her arms wrapped securely around her body in an insecure, girlish way.

“I love you. You know I love you, right?” She said softly, her words almost getting lost in the wind.

“Of course. I love you too, Bev. More than anything. I love you the most,” Richie told her, and she smiled sadly before turning and continuing to walk back towards her bliss, her undoubtedly happy future. Richie watched her until she was a dark spot in the distance.

_And then Eddie came alive with a gasp, scrambling into a seated position before he was even fully awake and burying his face in his hands. Richie quickly tucked his wandering hand under his chin and watched Eddie through his lashes, not daring to break the silence and let Eddie know he was awake. Eddie was trembling – not with fear, but with raw entropy. _

_Richie wondered what he’d been dreaming about, but on a deeper level, he suspected he already knew. _

He was glad Beverly hadn’t asked why he’d driven such a short way from the hotel, because he wasn’t sure what his answer would have been. Telling her the truth – “well, Bev, I wasn’t sure how far I was going at the time. I wasn’t sure if I’d be coming back” – would’ve broken her heart. Beverly hated to think that there was anything her warmth and her words couldn’t fix in Richie.

But he hadn’t made it very far. The ocean lured him in, its waves offering to drown out his internal monologue.

_Eddie looked over his shoulder, almost catching Richie with his eyes open, but Richie was well-practiced in feigning sleep. He even allowed his mouth to fall open a little, faking perfect comfort even though the arm tucked behind his head had gone numb. _

_“Fucking hell,” Eddie whispered, ever-so-gently reaching for Richie’s glasses and placing them on the nightstand, folding the stems in with reverence._

_His hand returned to linger afterwards, tracing the reverse-S shape Richie’s hair made as it flowed from his temple. Richie forced himself to keep breathing as Eddie appeared to come to his senses, scoffing to himself as he noiselessly climbed out of bed and left Richie’s room to rejoin the others. _

And when he’d told Beverly he was going back to bed soon, he’d meant it, but he needed to dwell just a little bit longer. 

Perhaps if he’d done something differently, Eddie would be standing in front of him, wearing the proper navy suit he’d have worn to Ben and Beverly’s wedding. His hair would be combed neatly and his eyes would be wide and happy. He’d have cried the entire ceremony, obviously, to the disdain of every attendee except for their fellow Losers. Beverly herself would have to avoid looking at him because Eddie’s tears would set her off as well. 

And at the reception afterwards, he’d pull Richie into a comical waltz, the two of them taking up more than their fair share of the dance floor as they bickered.

“Spin _me_ now, asshole, I just spun you,” Eddie would bitch, trying to force Richie to hold his arm up so he could twirl himself under it, and Richie would laugh until his stomach hurt, grasping at every part of Eddie he could reach.

And even though Eddie had a hand in planning the wedding – obviously, because he always had to be in the middle of things – he’d keep whispering to Richie what they’d do differently for their own ceremony.

“There’s too many people here,” he’d say. “And I hate the floral arrangements, even though I picked it. Don’t tell Bev, but she was stuck between two absolutely horrendous ones, and this was the lesser of two evils.” 

“What would you prefer?” Richie would ask, his heart soaring at the fact that their future marriage was just assumed at that point. 

“Don’t call me cliché, but roses. Light pink and white and yellow and orange.”

“Do orange roses even exist?”

“It’s called genetic modification, asshole.”

And he’d smile up at Richie (because Richie was _still_ taller than him, even all these years later, though the gap between them had closed slightly, from nearly a foot to just a few inches), and Richie would draw him into a kiss, the two of them breathing each other in languidly because they had a million years to do this, to belong to each other like this, and—

_“What was your dream about?” Eddie asked, eyes wide and earnest. _

_“I dreamed we were at the Barrens, just you and me. I dreamed we were swimming in the water and the sun was golden on your skin. We were hiding from Bowers or IT or something – something was always at the edge of my vision, threatening to break in. Something was rustling in the bushes, but I couldn’t see what it was. I didn’t _care_ what it was,” Richie didn’t say._

_“I’d never swim in that water,” Eddie didn’t remind him, and Richie didn’t shrug in acknowledgement._

_“But you did that day. You were laughing with your head thrown back, and I thought you were beautiful, and even though I knew we were in danger, I still thought we were untouchable. And then I kissed you.”_

_“You kissed me?”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“Show me how.”_

_And Richie would kiss him again, and he’d look Eddie in the eyes and guarantee him forever with all the sincerity and confidence of twelve-year-old in love. _

And back on the beach, a life-time later, the meaning of forever had shifted but Richie’s promise remained the same. Eddie still had a hold on him and he always would. The moon shone down upon him, its light fragmenting as it hit the water, shattering into a million, dancing pieces. A single tear slipped down Richie’s cheek, unbidden. 

_Can you tell me was it worth it? Baby, I don’t wanna know._

**Author's Note:**

> grief is isolating and incomprehensible — this is what i hoped to capture through richie’s chaotic, nonlinear internal monologue. part of him is stuck in the past, where he had eddie and he was terrified of this fact, and part of him is stuck in the present, where he’s finally accepting his homosexuality but eddie has been taken from him. richie can’t decide which of these tragedies he’d rather deal with, so he jumps back and forth in time and avoids them both. 
> 
> also: i’m sorry for writing a songfic in 2019, but Stevie Nicks really did something with Silver Springs... 
> 
> [listen](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2RkD9DAIoENk1L3SKibYLf?si=Eo8Nsk0eT1G1UOCs1NlWaw)
> 
> [my tumblr](https://acwrite.tumblr.com/)


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